Ron was silent. Hermione could see the muscles of his jaw working as he kept clenching and releasing it.
“We need to find the horcruxes,” he finally said. Hermione let out a low, deep breath that she'd been anxiously holding and nodded.
“We do,” she said. “Tom and Harry are the linchpins. Ideologically, the Death Eaters are too diverse. It's Tom's power that keeps the army cohesive. If we can kill him, permanently, there should be enough infighting to give the Resistance the upper hand.”
“I guess that's the one upside to Tom's delusions of immortality, he isn't bothering to groom a successor,” Ron said woodenly as he looked over another mission report. Hermione could see her signature on the bottom, verifying the injured, calculating the losses in neat, impersonal numbers. “Although I don't doubt the Malfoys will think they're first in line now that Bellatrix is dead. Fucking psychopaths.”
“You need to convince Harry that the horcruxes are the first priority,” she said, staring at Ron intently. “Especially now, after Ginny. I'm worried he just wants to ignore them.”
Ron's expression grew strained.
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
Hermione hesitantly drew closer.
“Ron, I hope what I said at the meeting last night didn't make you feel like it was your fault. You saved Ginny. I didn't think it would be appropriate to withhold the information but I didn't mean to hurt you by disclosing it.”
“It's fine,” he said, expression stiff. “You made the right call.”
“I'm sorry—”
“Don't. I don't really want to talk about it,” he said in a shaking voice that brooked no argument.
Hermione's eyes darted across his face, recognising the tension around his eyes, the scarlet tipping his ears while his face grew so pale his freckles stood out like drops of blood across his face.
If she pushed, he'd explode.
Hermione felt her heart sink.
“Right. Well, I'll leave you to review,” she said turning to leave.
She made her way up a flight of stairs slowly.
The number of subjects she avoided with Harry and Ron in order to not fight with them had slowly created a chasm.
Trying to stay focused. Stay on mission. All those personal issues and arguments she'd put off for another day. Assuming the war would end and they'd have a chance to deal with it all without compromising their focus and risking someone's life.
But the war had rolled on for years.
Now they barely knew how to speak to each other at all. There was so much unspoken resentment. So many things they'd waited too long to say. Every disagreement was about a thousand more things than merely the issue at hand.
The notion that they could ever go back and fix it felt impossible.
Maybe there had been a chance before Malfoy. But now—
Hermione felt almost certain that she had crossed a line that they would never allow her to come back from. To them, the magnitude of the betrayal would permanently sever things.
Just thinking about it made it hard to breathe.
She found herself in a practice room. She went over, slotted her feet under a wardrobe used to store equipment and started doing sit-ups until her abdominal muscles felt like they had been injected with acid.
She had discovered that Draco's exercise regime was an excellent way of channeling her stress, frustration and grief. She never intended to tell him, but she wished she had started exercising years ago. The physical symptoms of stress could not be suppressed with occlumency. Funneling it all into exercise was an excellent means to burn it off.
The surge of endorphins afterward was an additional upside.
After doing so many sit-up repetitions that she could barely peel herself off the floor, she rolled over and started doing push ups. She was rubbish at them, but she was also resolved. She was determined to work her way up until she actually did as many in a row as Draco had instructed.
She was slick with sweat and felt as though she'd been struck by a full body jelly-jinx when she finished all the various repetitions. She was only doing a quarter of the quantity, but she had finally managed to work through all of different exercises.
She stumbled down the stairs and fell asleep in the window seat.
When she woke the next morning, her whole body was protesting. Every bit of her ached. She scuttled down the stairs into a bathroom and took a long shower before anyone else was up.
That night she carefully reviewed her mental checklist of what she needed for Draco's procedure. She'd bought a cheap bottle of tequila in case he decided he wanted something. She doubted he'd have ever tasted the muggle alcohol, and she'd decided that he deserved to suffer if he chose to ignore her advice about bringing his own.
While she was packing up several potions, she felt someone breach the wards on her potion closet and turned to find Harry standing awkwardly behind her.
“Hermione,” he said, only meeting her eyes for a moment before dropping his gaze.
“Yes?” she said cautiously, slipping a few more vials into the pockets in her satchel.
“I—,“ he started and then stalled.